Ripper
by yllimilly
Summary: 1888 London AU. Jack the Ripper roams the streets of London, and Mai Valentine isn't about to fall prey to the murderer. Violence. Written for contest.


round 04

bribeshipping mai valentine x regimbald rappley (second industrial revolution AU!rex raptor)

**ripper**

m-rated for violence

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HE REACHED FOR a knife and carefully traced a rectangle around the two column article. He didn't like to tear paper, couldn't stand the dry, ripping sound.

After a last clean stroke he grabbed the cut-out between his thumb and index and laid the knife on the table, parallel to the cut it had made. Jack the Ripper was laying low these days, according to that overzealous reporter, but that didn't prevent everyone and anyone in the press from speculating about him, his motives, his next moves. The man scoffed. The Whitechapel murderer surely was boosting paper sales.

The man gave the strip of paper a brisk flick of the finger, then turned around and, using a hair pin, hung it to one of the other hundred news clippings that covered the wall behind him.

He leaned back in his chair, placing his feet on the desk before him, staring thoughtfully at the information maze. Bold headlines, alarming, lying, demagogue. Crude pictures of the cadavers of young women who were victims of society long before their brutal murders. The man opened the drawer of his study.

Tonight he would take another stroll down Whitechapel.

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SHE STOPPED HIDING her limp as she took a right into one of the darker alleys, the kind so dark and filthy, a place that even the rats avoided. To think that this place was now famous. World famous!

But living in the East End didn't make Mai Valentine famous by association.

Sooner or later her only patron, the Baron, would replace her. He kept telling her about the things he had some newer, younger girls do to him, for him, and to one another. Mai had done the same when she was young and desperate, but she'd raised the bar and now had standards. Not anybody could afford her.

Sooner her later her clock was bound to start ticking. Like others before her, she would fall on the wrong side of the thirties, and no one would be by her side.

Well, so be it. She didn't owe anyone anything, so it was only fair.

Her boot left trails in the dirt. Mai looked over her shoulder every other step she took. The slums were pretty empty at this hour. Even the thugs kept to themselves, hiding in the nooks and crannies of the city. Not that she was afraid. Thugs, she could handle. Nothing to be scared of, merely a few youngsters with liquid courage and an empty stomach. Mai Valentine had some kind of immunity in this place. The riff-raff knew not to mess with her, they knew how she was of the same material as everybody else in Whitechapel.

She had once been young. But never docile. She had sworn she'd get out of the dead end that was Warsaw. She'd go to Berlin. Maybe Paris. She'd become somebody.

She had to. She couldn't let competition make her a nobody.

Mai stopped in the middle of the narrow alley. She leaned against the wall opposing the door to her room, feeling safe. She massaged her knee. It was hot and bloated. She'd been hit pretty hard.

And then, between two of her ragged breaths, she heard footsteps.

Echoing from the deeper end of the alley.

Mai gasped. She felt the dagger stashed in a pocket of her corset - she'd sewn it in herself, you can't rely on the police if you're on the fringe of humanity like her - and just touching the hard blade reassured her.

The footsteps quickened their pace. She fumbled for the heavy metal key tied around her neck.

"Interesting time to be taking a stroll," a low, unhurried male voice said from afar. There was no mistake. The passerby was addressing her.

Mai fumbled with the lock - it just never seemed to work - and rushed inside when the door gave in, closing it behind her back. She pressed her back against the door, blood rushing to her eardrums, then flipped around and locked it.

With haggard breath she pressed her face and fingers against the tiny window.

She could see the man outside, standing still in front of the door, observing, taking in his surroundings.

Mai rushed upstairs despite the pain in her knee, leaving behind her the image of the stranger in the green coat, and the fresh bloodstains on the glass.

When she threw herself on her bed she realized in terror that the man now knew where she lived.

.

_**THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERER**__ STRIKES AGAIN_. It was on every front page. On everyone's lips. It was the talk of the town, here and abroad. They'd commissioned a French artist to come to London and reconstruct his portrait. Over thirteen people had claimed to have seen a shady man roaming about the filthy alleys of the East End. Scotland Yard had arrested five suspects, forced to release them a few days later for blatant lack of evidence.

It was maddening to the point of becoming amusing. He couldn't suppress a bitter, primitive laugh that echoed between the walls of the small room.

The man ran the sharp blade of a knife against the etched lips of the imagined murderer. He took the carefully cropped portrait and stood up with a strange feeling of serenity, then placed the portrait against the door and jabbed the knife right between those charcoal eyes, giving the paper victim an enraged look.

He grabbed his green overcoat and left.

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_to be continued..._


End file.
